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Roar Rookie
Joined June 2014
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Passionate follower of football, especially Sydney FC and the Socceroos. Supported the Northern Spirit during their short existence. Love playing tennis. Used to follow rugby league growing up but lost interest after the demise of the North Sydney Bears.
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Not at all Fuss! At least not on this occasion! The above comments are constructive and respectful in my opinion.
Perhaps you are taking it easy on a newbie poster and I should not expect to be let off so lightly in the future? 😛
I by and large agree with your comments and have expanded on the mechanics of it in my response to Ben of Phnom Penh above.
Asia remain football's laggards, as Latin America dominates
Please do write a thesis on this. I would love to read it!
You make a good point in saying that the current qualification system is already quite onerous and would become even lengthier if they were to go for an 8 to 10 team round robin format in the final round.
Perhaps a possible solution for this issue would be to combine the preliminary qualifying stages with qualification for the Asian Cup. In keeping with the spirit of borrowing ideas from other confederations, this would be similar to CAF (African) qualification process (at least at one point in time).
The CONMEBOL qualification process for FIFA World Cup 2014 (involving 9 teams this cycle) started on 7 October 2011 and concluded on 15 October 2013 (excluding 2 legged intercontinental playoffs).
The Asian Cup 2011 was held between 7 and 29 January 2011. Qualification involving major teams began in the weeks of 14-21 January 2009 and concluded on 3 March 2010.
If we take the assumption that there will not be any significant changes to the international football calendar in the future, then we could make this work as we can avoid fixture clashes between the three processes mentioned above.
The current Asian Cup qualification process involves 5 groups of 4 teams, with two teams from each group qualifying for the tournament proper. Add the 3 teams that finished in the top 3 in the previous tournament, 2 Challenge Cup winners, and the host, and you have the 16 participating teams for the tournament.
If the AFC were to scrap the rule allowing the top 3 teams from the previous tournament and involve them in the qualifiers, then they will get 10 teams for the final round of World Cup qualifiers (or have the 3 best 2nd placed teams if we were to go with a final group of 8) as well as for the Asian Cup. And the 3 best 3rd placed teams in their respective pools (Or 4 if the Asian Cup host also happens to finish in the top 2 in their group) from this qualification stage would also qualify for the Asian Cup in addition to the 10 teams mentioned in the previous sentence. Add the 2 Challenge Cup winners and you have your 16 as per usual.
I do recall that some of the Asian Cup qualifiers were played outside of the FIFA window, which is an issue. However, there are usually windows for up to 6 matches between September and November, so making use of these fixtures could circumvent this problem. Using these international windows for qualifiers would mean fewer windows for friendlies in preparation for the Asian Cup. Nothing is perfect I guess! To me this is a small price to pay.
Another possible way of reducing the number of fixtures would be to involve the sole (half) qualifier from the OFC in the final round of the AFC qualifiers. This would save 2 games in the month of November prior to the World Cup. This of course would be on the proviso that both the CONCACAF and CONMEBOL confederations do not put up a fuss at the prospect of losing the opportunity for their teams to qualify via (in their opinion) an easier route through OFC/AFC teams rather than against each other.
Hong Myung-Bo and either Yuto Nagatomo or Shinji Kagawa (I cannot recall) alluded to a lack of physicality being a contributor to the sub-par performances of their respective teams. If this is true then having the OFC winner (most likely New Zealand) involved would provide extra exposure to this element of football. Even if their statements are mere excuses rather than legitimate reasons for their failures, exposure to a different brand of football does not hurt their causes (unless literally through a tackle from behind from Ben Sigmund, for example).
And if the AFC were to go with 8 rather than 10 teams, then there are 4 less fixtures.
So yes, there are challenges in altering the qualification process, but I think it can be done! And also yes, raising standards in the second tier in the long run would have a much more profoundly positive impact than the above suggestion (Although one could also make the argument that the 2-5 “second tier” teams who make it to the final round of qualification would benefit from the relatively constant exposure to top quality teams within the confederation if the proposed format above were to be implemented).
Perhaps I should have written this response as an article rather than a comment, seeing that it ended up being as lengthy as the CONMEBOL qualification process itself.
I know this is a long winded response so I hope you have read this far because I have a question for you. Which elements of Europe does the AFC blindly attempts to emulate in your opinion? I can think of the Champions League format for one, but would be interested to hear your thoughts on other issues!
Asia remain football's laggards, as Latin America dominates
Hello Roarers. I’ve been a long time reader of both articles and comments from contributors (including notable regulars that I can remember off the top off my head, such as Fussball, Qantas, AR, nordster, Midfielder, j binnie etc. and today finally decided to sign up and join the in on the fun! Here goes my first contribution!
This World Cup has been underwhelming for teams from the Asian confederation. I agree with most people’s sentiments that Japan was the most disappointing of all the AFC teams.
There are possible longer term solutions such as youth development, more players in Europe, a more unified direction as a confederation etc. But in the mean time, I tend to believe that a slight tweak of the qualification format may result in teams being more ‘battle hardened’ going into the tournament.
Instead of splitting the final round into 2 groups of 5, they could have 1 group of 8 teams. This would at least allow all the top AFC teams (currently teams such as Japan, Korea Republic, Australia, Iran and to a lesser extent Uzbekistan) to face each other regularly.I suppose it would somewhat resemble the CONMEBOL format. Perhaps the preliminary qualifying stages could be streamlined to allow for the extra games in the final round.
Interestingly, I saw the following quote from Carlos Queiroz on the reasons for (in his opinion) Asian football’s current predicament following Iran’s defeat tot Bosnia in another article:
“You cannot copy Europe because the day you think you are close, they are one step ahead because they also progress,” the Mozambique-born coach said.
“But the officials persist in copying Europe and year after year the gap is higher and higher. It is a pity because 60 percent of the money in football comes from Asia and they have the worst conditions.”
Does anyone here have any opinion /insight as to which practices he is specifically alluding to?
Asia remain football's laggards, as Latin America dominates
I believe Cha Du Ri followed a similar path in terms of converting from striker to fullback/wingback?
Former Mariner Mitch Duke embracing J.League challenge